The Good Goodbye (31 page)

“We can’t,” Hunter says. His mouth is at my temple.

“No, we can’t,” I murmur against his throat. But we do.

—

“Remember,” Chelsea Lee calls from the front of the classroom. “You need to get me your essays by next Thursday.”

The bell’s rung and we’re gathering up our iPads and tablets. I’ve got an idea I want to explore with her, and I take the steps down to where she’s standing, talking to a bunch of kids. When it’s my turn, I say, “Professor Lee?”

She’s busy pushing a folder into her briefcase and she stops and looks at me. She’s so pretty, even prettier up close. She’s wearing black today, a long-sleeved dress cut short. Her legs are long and tanned. “Arden, right?”

I nod, smiling. Somehow she knows me. I haven’t even spoken up in class. Maybe my quizzes haven’t sucked that bad. “I wanted to talk to you about our term paper. I was thinking about doing Giotto.”

She tilts her head. “Far be it from me to discourage you, but are you sure? There won’t be much source material on him. How do you plan to get around that?” Her gaze moves to a point behind me, and I turn to see Rory slipping out through the classroom door.

—

What is that blinding light?
Pressure on my eyelid, then it’s gone.

“…going to try her back on the ventilator,” Dr. Morris says, close to my ear.

“Do you think it’s safe?” Uncle Vince asks. They’re talking about me and I’m afraid. Where is Aunt Gabrielle? I feel her nearby. I hear the rustle of her silk clothing.

“We can put her right back on if we need to.”

A snake slides across my throat, tightening. I panic, try to scrabble at it with my fingers.

“Is she awake?” Uncle Vince says. “Rory? Honey?”

I’m not Rory!

“She may be in some discomfort,” Dr. Morris says. “Some patients can’t tolerate being on the ventilator. We can’t have her agitated.”

She’s going to give me more drugs.
I can’t fall back asleep. I can’t.
I think about swirling the tip of my paintbrush into azure blue. Sky, sea. But…everything’s already getting woozy in my head.

“Is it working?” Aunt Gabrielle’s voice is whip-hard against my skin. When she tells you to do something, you do it. You don’t ever want to piss her off.

Rory’s always been afraid of her mom. She was drunk when she told me why.

Rory

I GET A NEW
key card at Student Services. The old lady behind the desk glares at me, like it’s going to kill her to stand up and walk over to the little machine on the table behind her. “Are you sure it’s not somewhere in your room?” she says in her pissed-off old-lady voice.

I don’t waste my smile on her. I know who it will work on and who it won’t. “Look. My roommate’s a pig. I’m lucky I can even find my own bed in that mess.”

The only thing Arden is really careful with is her stash of Adderall, which she keeps in her bathrobe pocket, in the small leather change purse our grandma gave each of us for Christmas one year. I check it every so often, to see how she’s doing. Arden doesn’t think I know, but I know everything about her. Even the stuff not worth knowing, like how she scoops back the right side of her hair first and then the left when she’s making a ponytail, or how she taps her teeth with her pen when she’s thinking hard. How she eats Sour Patch Kids in this order—red, yellow, orange—and how she never eats the green ones. How she pretends to get along with D.D. when everyone can tell she can’t stand her.

I’m in D.D. and Whitney’s room, watching a show on Whitney’s laptop, when Arden stops in the doorway. “Your mom’s car is in the parking lot.”

I sit straight up—I’d forgotten to check in earlier. I’ve knocked over Whitney’s can of soda. “Shit.” She swipes her hand across her pillow.

“Sorry.” I slide off her bed and grab my bag. “Gotta go.”

“Where?” D.D. says with interest. Which is how all four of us end up running down the stairs and out the side door. We’re laughing as we’re going, thinking about how we left everything just lying out in D.D.’s room, like a crime scene. Arden’s in her pajama bottoms and a T-shirt and carrying her toothbrush, and Whitney’s barefoot.
Ouch,
she keeps saying, as we run across The Bowl.
Ouch, ouch, ouch.
Which only makes us crack up harder.

We end up roaming through neighborhoods, creeping through alleys and across people’s backyards. We have the vague idea of heading to Fraternity Row, which Arden’s trying to get us not to do. “I look like crap,” she protests, and D.D. hooks her arm through hers. “No way. You look cute.” I’d told her Arden had gotten her stuff from her old connection and now D.D.’s trying to suck up—which is totally hilarious.

We turn a corner and I realize I’ve been on this street before, the way the trees on both sides of the street arch their long branches to touch in the middle like the ceiling of a church. This is Chelsea’s street, and there, four houses down on the corner, is her place, with its narrow porch and heavy oak door. “This way.” I try to lead everyone in the opposite direction, but Whitney grabs my elbow, stopping me. “Hold on.” She bends and lifts her foot. We stand in a clump on the sidewalk. “I think I’m bleeding.”

“Want us to call nine-one-one?” D.D. jokes.

“Seriously. I think there’s glass in it. Someone, turn on your cell-phone flashlight so I can see.” My cell phone’s in my room, plugged into the charger. Good thing, too, because I know it’s hopping all over the place with the thousand texts and phone calls my mom’s probably sending me right this second. Arden had been on her way to the bathroom to wash up, so it’s D.D. who shines her cell phone across the bottom of Whitney’s foot. Sure enough, there’s a bright red smear of blood.

“Oh, yuck,” D.D. says.

“I’m going to be sick,”Arden says.

“Will you hold that steady?” Whitney says.

“Yes, ma’am,” D.D. says.

The porch light’s on at Chelsea’s house and there’s a car parked in the driveway, some sort of sedan. The rest of the house is dark, except for one glowing window upstairs.

“Just pull it out,” D.D. is saying to Whitney, who snaps back, “I’m trying.”

Arden’s standing beside me. She’s looking up at the bright window, too.

—

I thought I was in the mood. I mean, texting Hunter at three a.m. and getting him to let me in and kick out his roommate is about one thing and one thing only. But I keep seeing that glowing oblong of light that I know came from Chelsea’s bedroom. I keep seeing the unfamiliar car in her driveway. I hadn’t been close enough to see the plates. There was nothing at all about it I would recognize in broad daylight, not even if it came roaring down the street toward me, its license plate getting bigger and bigger until it was the last thing I saw. Hunter finally leans back to look at me. “You there?”

I reach up to brush his hair from his forehead. “Sorry. I’ve just got a thing going on with my mom.”

“Oh. Your mom. Right.”

“What does
that
mean—‘Oh. Your mom’?”

“Nothing. But you got to know how she is.”

“Tell me. How is my mom?” I sit up and swing my feet to the floor, reaching for my dress lying in a crumpled heap at the foot of the bed.

“Oh, come on, Rory. Don’t be like that.” He grabs my arm. I shake him off. “So what if she’s a little protective?” I demand.

He doesn’t even answer me. Doesn’t that say it all?

It’s still dark when I let myself into my room. Arden’s there, asleep in the mound of clothes she calls her bed. I can see her hair shining in the moonlight from the bare window. “Arden?” I whisper, but she doesn’t answer. I curl up in my bed, slide my hand beneath my pillow to finger the soft square of pink blanket—all that’s left of Arden’s baby blanket she gave me when we were little—and listen to her breathe.

—

“How are classes going?” my dad asks the next morning. I press my cell phone to my ear as I search through Arden’s bathrobe pocket for the change purse. I click it open and pour the tablets onto my palm. “Fine.” I know he’s asking only because my mom told him to call me and Make Sure I’m All Right. Only thirty-eight Adderall left. Which means Arden’s upping her dose.

I’d borrowed D.D.’s cell phone to call my mom last night, pretending I was at some study group.
Sorry,
I’d told her.
I forgot to call earlier.
A pause. She was trying to decide how far to push it. At last she’d said,
I worry when you don’t check in.
Nothing about how she’d gotten in the car and driven all the way to campus to hunt me down; nothing about how she was probably standing outside my dorm room right that second.

“How’s Double?” I know this will derail Dad. He hasn’t wanted to talk about work in months. He’s shrunken up like popcorn you’ve spilled soda on. It’s still recognizable, but shriveled and sad-looking. The stuff you throw away.

“Same old same old.”

Does he even hear himself? “Mom drove up here again last night.” Silence tells me he didn’t know. “You have to stop her. It’s embarrassing.”

“Your leaving’s been hard on her, honey.”

“She has to get over it.”

“She will, Rory. Just give her time.”

“Why do you do that? Why do you pretend she just needs time?” Where have you been all these years, Dad? “What are you going to do after you sell Double? Where will you go?” Where will I go? Where will I be? If he gets rid of the only thing I’ve known, does that mean he can so easily get rid of me?

“What do you mean, sell Double?” he says carefully.

“Oh, my God.” I snap the change purse closed and drop it into the pocket. “You didn’t think Mom would tell me? She tells me everything.” Way more than I ever want to know.

“I’ll talk to her,” he says in that distant voice that means nothing.

“Whatever, Dad. Just forget about it.” By the time we hang up, I know he already has.

—

Chelsea doesn’t say sweetheart, or honey, or darling. She’s clear. She’s direct. There’s no guessing with Chelsea.

“I texted you,” I say.

She grabs her long hair and pulls it over a shoulder. “I was up late getting ready for class.”

“Did you need help with that?”

She looks at me over her reading glasses, taps the papers in her lap. “What’s this about?”

“You weren’t alone. You had someone over.”

She sits back in her chair and looks at me. “Let’s get something straight. I don’t do jealousy.”

“You think this is jealousy? Oh, I promise you. You’ll know jealousy when you see it.” It’s not jealousy. It’s fear, the unpleasant sloshing in my stomach. I bend to pick up her cat, winding around my ankles. I press my face against her head, the soft fur tickling my nose. I want to believe her. I have to. “No one knows about us.”

“I didn’t think we had to talk about why.” So many reasons. She reaches across the table and takes my hand in hers, interlacing our fingers together. Her cat meows and jumps down. “Look, it was just my mom. She was on her way to Maine and I gave her my bedroom. Okay?”

It’s weird to think of Chelsea having a mom. I wonder how they get along. Arden understands more than anyone, but Arden’s not there anymore, not like she used to be. Something’s changing between us, so who’s left?

“I hate this place.” I take her hand and turn it palm up and trace her heart line with my finger.

“There’s nothing wrong with this place. There’s nothing wrong with you. It’s just that you two don’t belong together.”

“I don’t think I belong at Harvard, either.” I can’t believe I’ve said this out loud. I don’t dare look at her.

“Maybe not.”

I let out my breath and look up. Her eyes are molten brown, not even a speck of gold. “So where do I belong?”

Chelsea tilts her head and looks at me. She doesn’t say it. She doesn’t have to. I know what she’s thinking.
With me.
I pull my class ring off and push it into her palm. “You can borrow this if you want.”

Natalie

DETECTIVE GALLAGHER WANTS
a few minutes of our time. He’s alone in the family lounge, sitting in the chair facing the door. What does he do, chase everyone else out when he wants to use this space as an interrogation room?

“How’s Arden?” he asks as Theo and I come into the room. It’s a pleasantry, something to say. I don’t think the man cares, not in a genuine way. I don’t bother to answer, but Theo says, “We’re worried. There should have been improvement by now.”

I don’t want Theo to share this and expose our vulnerable fear to this man who only wants to hurt us. But that’s Theo. He always thinks the best of people. He lets them trip over their feet. He reaches out a hand to help them up. I stand by the window, with my arms crossed. “Have you spoken with our attorney? She doesn’t want us talking to you without her being here.”

“It’s all right.” Theo throws me a warning glance. “What is it? What do you need to know?”

“When was the last time Arden was home?” Detective Gallagher says.

We’ve been over this before. I don’t answer. Theo says, “Two weeks ago, for her birthday. She surprised us.”

He nods. “What about since then?”

“Nothing. Why?”

“She ever say she was afraid of Hunter?”

I turn toward the man in surprise. “No.” I look to Theo, who shakes his head. “Never. We’d have told you if she had.”

“She never told you he texted her Wednesday:
I know where you live
?”

I come over, sit in the chair opposite him. “No.”

“Have you ever talked to Hunter?”

I find Theo’s hand. “We’ve never even met him.”

“So you’ve never talked to him.”

“No,” Theo says.

“What about last Thursday afternoon when he called your house?”

“What?” I look to Theo. He looks back blankly.

“We didn’t talk to him,” Theo says.

“Someone did. For five minutes and twelve seconds.”

But that’s impossible. I scroll past through the days, the hours. “Thursday afternoon? I was at the restaurant.”

“I would have been home with the boys after school,” Theo says. “What time did he call?”

“Four-thirty-eight.”

Theo sighs. “It was Henry. I caught him on the kitchen phone. He hung up as I came in the room. I thought it was a telemarketer.” He looks to Detective Gallagher. “He knows he’s not allowed to answer the phone, but he does it anyway.”